ABSTRACT
T h e question whether a free Moslem community survived, or was permitted to exist in the Balearic Islands, after their several submissions to direct Christian rule during the thirteenth century has suffered, hitherto, from the lack of documentary evidence. Those historians who affirm the presence of Saracens other than slaves have based their assertions almost exclusively on the information given us in the chronicles of James I 1 and Marsilio2, confining their statements thereby to Mallorca and Ibiza, and assuming only the presence of more or less free3 Moslem agricultural labourers or exaricos.4 Minorca, on the other hand, is
The documents, however, do more than merely establish the presence of free Moslems in the Balearics. They throw light on the role of the Moslems in colonization, on their economic position, on the institution of debt-slavery to which many of them fell victim and on the peculiar system of taxation to which they were subject.
